All Forum Posts by: Charles Kao

@Victor Wasson Try the local

Facebook group and see who is providing good advice to others. Watch from a

distance who is providing value.

@Amy Silverman Interesting choice in cities. Why those cities besides pricepoint? I do lots in Muskegon if looking for

more!

@Nadir M.

You don't scale a business by trying to save 100 bucks by calling your parents. 290 doesn't sound too bad to me but if its consistently high then just change PM companies. I would probably expect to pay 100 bucks less but if it was afterhours and they did not have a working shower that's reasonable. Personally I tell all my clients if you make less than 50 bucks an hour you need to self manage because you're always going to be thinking how much you could be saving instead of how much you could be making by finding more to invest. As a licensed builder, former property manager and an investor if I have to worry about unemployment and liability insurance, cost of my company vehicle which has higher liability coverage than a regular vehicle, administrative costs, gas, fronting the bill and potentially not having a customer pay me and also all the time spent providing free quotes or waiting around to get a yes or no from client. As your PM, If you take an hour to call me back I'm still paying my guy to wait or if he has to come back the PM has to coordinate maintenance guy with the tenant so now I am charging you for another trip charge plus paying for time to arrange another contractor to come back with tenant which could be multiple calls. When you factor all those things in 290 is not bad. Keep in mind with PM you are paying for time and convenience not repairs. Sure you could have been around and done it yourself or you could have been on vacation trying to find somebody to come out to make 100 in labor with no guarantee you will give them the work when contractors everywhere are busy. If it's the latter of course you would say yes.

@Matthew Hoef

Why Traverse City?

@Kenneth Appel

Most of the banks and credit unions that lend 90-100 LTV are super conservative on appraisal so back to typical 80 LTV anyways. What is the seasoning on the primary and do you have very clear comps?

@Christian Hall

Numbers are just numbers but if the population is declining now what do you think it will do if the economy turns? Anybody that can is going to Midland. Way better schools

and cost of living is still ultra low. That is where I would get a rental if you are looking up that way. Even during recession the city's top 3 employers were not affected and actually has attracted other companies because of the large amount of international talent that Dow attracts.

@Christian Hall It pains me to say this but I would never invest there. My family owned quite a bit of commercial real estate in Tri cities

and everything in Bay City is selling

for almost what we bought in the 80s and 90s. Population continues to decline with nothing to save it.

This is a really dense statement.  I have invested in multiple states including Texas and California and there are alot of bad laws everywhere.  It takes two years of being late to have this happen and while I agree it should not be massive profits, people pay their taxes because they know what will happen from hearing about it.  With that being said, I have kept up on this legislation and I imagine it will change within the next 1-2 years.  Some counties are obviously much quicker to jump on board than others as I had a client behind for 3 years on over 30 properties that never lost a home.  We just sold off that portfolio recently.  To say don't invest in an entire state that is the source of the largest freshwater source in the world while living in a state that quite possibly in 6 years will use it's largest fresh water source almost entirely due to overconsumption is really outlandish because of ONE law.  I have followed the latter immensely as I work for a nonprofit focused on clean water preservation worldwide and it would not surprise me if Michigan was shipping billions of dollars of water to Arizona in the next few years.  There are plenty of reasons not to invest somewhere but this article is an overreaction.

@Mike M.

I agree, don't invest in Michigan. I don't want more competition! Worst place ever!

@Bryan Hart Go to file

place on bigger pockets. They are almost

all the same. Mine is very similar just no mention of EMD because not required in Michigan.